Westside schools have Merced County’s highest rates of absences

One in 4 Los Banos students are chronically absent, the highest rate in Merced County, meaning more than 26 percent of students missed at least 15 days of the 2013-14 school year.

Expansive absenteeism data was released Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights for the first time, tracking students who frequently miss class at nearly every public school in the United States.

Nationally, 13 percent of all students are considered chronically absent. Those numbers are higher for the country’s English learners, with 20 percent labeled as chronically absent.

Anthony Parreira, the Los Banos Unified school board president, said the district has someone on staff who visits the homes of students who are chronically absent. Just this week, the most recent district data on absenteeism was reported and discussed.

“We do have people actively working to help us with that problem,” Parreira said. “It’s nothing we’re happy about.”

Chowchilla Elementary was not far behind Los Banos’ rate of chronically absent students, with 24.3 percent missing 15-plus days of school in 2013-14. Gustine reported 18.3 percent of students are chronically absent – which is about 300 of the district’s small population of about 1,800.

At Merced City schools, about 1 in 10 students are chronically absent. Merced River Union Elementary reported no students missing more than 15 days, and Atwater Elementary had only two students who did. Merced River had fewer than 200 students while Atwater had nearly 4,800 in the 2013-14 school year.

Merced Union High School District, which includes high schools in multiple cities, reported 14 percent of students are chronically absent.

Merced County was among the top 10 counties with the state’s highest elementary school truancy rates, according to a report released last year by the state Attorney General’s Office. Those absences resulted in a loss of more than $15 million in state funding for Merced County schools in the 2014-15 school year, since funding is tied to average daily attendance.

The attorney general’s report only tracked student attendance up to fifth grade. California is among a handful of states that doesn’t track student attendance in its statewide records systems.

A full Associated Press analysis of the Department of Education data released Wednesday can be found here.

This story was originally published June 9, 2016 at 5:37 PM with the headline "Westside schools have Merced County’s highest rates of absences."